Harper Lee dead: The most powerful and inspiring quotes from To Kill a Mockingbird

The author died in her hometown following the publication of Go Set a Watchman last year

To Kill a Mockingbird author Harper Lee has died at the age of 89.

The US novelist from Monroeville, Alabama became widely known for her much-loved 1960 classic about racial injustice in the Deep South.

The story focuses on lawyer Atticus Finch, who agrees to defend a black man against a false rape charge and in turn finds himself having to defend his children Scout and Jem from prejudice.

Go Set a Watchman, accepted by most critics as an early draft of Mockingbird, was released last July to controversy over whether or not Lee gave its publication her blessing.

To Kill a Mockingbird remains a staple on school curriculums and one of many readers’ all-time favourite books.

Let’s take a look back at some of the powerful, inspiring, moving, funny and downright brilliant quotes it spawned:

“The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view. Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”

“People generally see what they look for and hear what they listen for.”

“We’re paying the highest tribute you can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It’s that simple.”

“Ladies in bunches always filled me with vague apprehension and a firm desire to be elsewhere.”

“Things are never as bad as they seem.”

“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing except make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corn cribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

“Things are always better in the morning.”

“The apple does not fall far from the tree.”

“Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I’d have the facts.”

“I know now what he was trying to do, but Atticus was only a man. It takes a woman to do that kind of work.”

“It’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you.”

“‘Atticus, he was real nice’. ‘Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.’”